Second Volume of “Letters to the Wall” Now Available

The second volume has been put to print and will soon be available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. We have added a few new touches for this collection of letters delivered to The Wall in 2017 and 2018 — for one, we have provided detailed time lines for 1967 and 1968, marking the fiftieth anniversaries of those times. Much of the material covers the resistance to the war on the home front. We have also included two maps of Viet Nam —one showing the areas of operation that the U.S. military applied to the country. In addition, we have a glossary of terms that pop up in letters as veterans slip into military jargon. Finally, we have indexed letters by the author’s name; we have set up a table of contents by “title” of letters (actually they are pull quotes); and if a name on The Wall was referenced in a letter, we have provided an index to where that name appears on The Wall. Essentially, we have looked upon this collection as an educational tool that we hope people will put in school libraries. And, oh, by the way, YOUR LETTER is in this collection. Thank you for furthering the discussion of this war that still remains with us in many ways….. Best, Doug

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Toward an honest commemoration of the American War in Vietnam

Mission statement

The Full Disclosure campaign is a Veterans For Peace effort to speak truth to power and keep alive the antiwar perspective on the American war in Viet Nam — which is now approaching a series of 50th anniversary events. It represents a clear alternative to the Pentagon’s current efforts to sanitize and mythologize the Vietnam war and to thereby legitimize further unnecessary and destructive wars.

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50 Years of Resistance In & Out Of Uniform

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On Burns/Novick PBS Documentary

Philip Jones Griffiths’ Viet Nam

This Month in History: 1969

February First trial of draft resistors known as the Buffalo 9. Around 150 University of Buffalo students and faculty picket the U.S. Courthouse, chanting “Free the Nine — The Trial’s a Crime”. Defendants argue that it was necessary to resist an “immoral, illegal, racist, politically insane war on the Vietnamese people.” Charges include assaulting federal officers, as well as draft evasion. The jury is unable to reach a verdict on several of the defendants but Bruce Beyer is convicted and receives a three-year sentence. Beyer later goes to Canada and then Sweden to help organize fellow resistors and deserters.

February Fort Gordon – Pfc. Dennis Davis editor of (the antiwar newspaper) Last Harass) is given an undesirable discharge.

February 14 The first three of 27 Gls charged with mutiny at the Presidio are found guilty and sentenced to 14, 15, and 16 years at hard labor by a court martial at the San Francisco Presidio stockade (see entry for October 14, 1968). By this time, three of those charged (Blake, Mather, and Pawlowski) had escaped to Canada. On appeal, the long sentences for mutiny were voided by the Court of Military Review in June 1970, and reduced to short sentences for willful disobedience of a superior officer. Rowland, for example, was released in 1970 after a year and a half imprisonment. See The Unlawful Concert by Fred Gardner for a fuller description of the case, as well as entry for October 14, 1968.

February 20 Tacoma – the Shelter Half coffee house’s business license is revoked. See October 1968 entry.

February 22-23 NLF attack 110 targets throughout South Vietnam, including Saigon.

February 25 36 U.S. Marines are killed by NVA (PAVN or VPA) who raid their base camp near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

2016 National Book Award Finalist, Viet Thanh Nguyen:

“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory . . . . Memory is haunted, not just by ghostly others but by the horrors we have done, seen, and condoned, or by the unspeakable things from which we have profited.”